In addition to my passion for photography I also like to climb. Climb as in rock climbing. Up until now I didn’t mix these two things, and when I went out climbing I didn’t take my DSLR with me, because I was afraid that it would “get hurt”, and I also wanted to concentrate on climbing. Actually I was climbing long before I got into photography, so at first there was no issue here. But since I started photographing it always bugged me that I don’t have my camera with me.
Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.
Recently it started bugging me so much that I couldn’t resist it anymore, and took my camera and three lenses with me when we went to climb. I decided first to climb a few routes, and then to take photos of my friends climbing. It worked out just great.
In my photos, I wanted to achieve several goals:
1. To show the surroundings in which we climbed.
Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.
2. To show the climber and the belayer in such a way that viewer would understand what is going on, and also to make the height of the climb “visible”, so the viewer would feel that the climber is high above the ground.
Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.
3. To show the dynamics of climber when he climbs the route.
Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.
4. To create rather artistic than documentary photos.
Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.
You can judge for yourself to what extent I succeeded in achieving these goals.
One very important thing that I couldn’t control was the harsh sunlight, which made the contrast between the shadows and highlights very strong. When I go to photograph alone, I can time my visit to early morning or late afternoon, but in this case there were factors beyond my control. Partial solution to the harsh sunlight was shooting in RAW, and then in post processing playing with the “fill light” and “contrast” sliders to make the deep shadows brighter.
Any comments, suggestions, or opinions are always welcome.
Till the next time, take care!
Greg.